ONLY FOR THE RICH?
Weber, Faustin N.
But I am troubled. As I look to the future, I see that the gift of a parochial-school faith formation may become a rarity. In some inner cities, Catholic schools have been closed by fiat of the...
...This parish functions as a "hyperchurch...
...The nuns, of course, are largely gone...
...n sum, the Catholic community in this country appears to be presiding over the gradual dismantling of perhaps its greatest achievement: the creation and maintenance of an academically competitive school system geared to the faith formation of the Catholic young...
...But was the cost of these lessons more or less than the difference in tuition between the private and the Catholic school...
...Middle- to lower-middle-class families, particularly those with more than one child, can barely afford to send their children to Catholic schools any longer...
...The case for such programs has not been made, not with any data to back it up...
...In part, this comes about because we live in a renowned public school district--one kindergarten teacher has her Ph.D.--where many Catholic parents choose to send their children to the tax-supported bells-and-whistles education offered by our public school...
...Most of our families are proof of this fact...
...First and foremost, the mission was to mediate Catholic culture to students...
...As suburbs push further and further out from city limits, the families that follow search for nearby Catholic schools to accommodate their children...
...Catholic community over the differences between CCD and Catholic-school faith formation...
...These trends are demonstrable, real, and national in scope...
...Despite the large number of Catholic parents who have opted for CCD in Cincinnati, waiting lists at many parish schools are long...
...before that she taught first, second, and third grade in combined classes of forty-five...
...But the mission of the sisters was never primarily economic...
...FAUSTIN N. WEBER Faustin N. Weber is principal of Montgomenj Catholic High School in Montgomery, Alabama...
...Commonweal | 5 April 10, 1998...
...We need Catholic schools because we and our children need to be called to serve others...
...Even an excellent CCD program, by definition and design, cannot do what a Catholic he history of the Catholic church in the United States is largely one of transition from the poor, immigrant church of the ghetto to a church of the suburbs...
...One would think that this lacuna, coupled with the studies that demonstrate the positive impact Catholic schools have on the Catholic young, argues in favor of a vigorous, sustained debate in the U.S...
...Parish councils are charged with the unpleasant task of defining how admission to these schools will be determined...
...Of course we should have good fine arts programs in Catholic schools...
...Given that aim, the need for Catholic schools is more acute now than ever...
...Data published by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) in 1997 confirm that the total number of Catholic elementary schools in the United States declined from 8,281 in 1976 to 6,903 in 1997, with approximately half a million fewer students enrolled in these schools than twenty years earlier...
...Transferring into many of these schools in later grades is virtually impossible...
...Here, I believe, affluent Catholics have a special responsibility, for with their assistance, Catholic schools can provide a quality education for all children, even as we keep tuitions down...
...And did those classes do a better job than the Catholic school...
...For the institution most responsible for that transition is the Catholic school, and the people most responsible are the nuns...
...Unlike the muchstudied impact of Catholic schools on the urban poor, the suburban solution of reliance on CCD has not yielded the data needed to prove its worth...
...We are too busy to recognize that our Catholicism no longer defines us, that our values, spending habits, language, and attitudes are indistinguishable from anyone else's...
...And was she equally "inconvenienced" by taking her daughter to another place for her religious education, presumably a CCD class...
...I have heard firsthand stories from other dioceses across the country where families must compete for limited space in their parish schools, a situation acknowledged by the NCEA...
...Even in newer suburbs with large school-age populations, some parishes opt against building Catholic schools, signaling to parents that faith formation through CCD is a desirable alternative to a Catholicschool formation...
...We need Catholic schools as an antidote to our religious amnesia...
...The cost of a Catholic education has risen dramatically in order to pay salaries for lay faculty (still, the average Catholic school teacher earns from $5,000 to $8,000 a year less than a pubCommonweal | 4 April 10, 1998 parish school was built to do: complete the circle of faith begun in the home and lived out in the local parish community and surrounding neighborhood...
...Most American Cafllolics need only look back a generation or two to mark the approxiate point their families became "middle class...
...As Andrew Greeley noted in his Catholic University paper, "1 know of no evidence that 'religious education' has any independent impact at all on subsequent adult behavior of those who participated in it...
...At a minimum, our lack of data strongly suggests a pause before opting for the future dominance of a CCD model: a caution that applies not only to parents but to the Catholic leadership, whose silence on the relative merits of these two types of faith formation remains curious and troubling...
...I find distressing the number of affluent younger Catholics--themselves living testimonials to the success of Catholic schools--who are opting out of Catholic schools and placing their children in private schools...
...An absence of geographic parish boundaries in some dioceses, coupled with the failure of some newer parishes to build or sponsor schools, has launched an avalanche of applications for admission to good parish schools in the vicinity...
...Is it more important to have her daughter receive art lessons at school or to grow up within a Catholic community where the practices and values of the church are regarded as "normal" by the students...
...It is not our faith but our social class that shapes us...
...True, new schools have opened in the past decade, and in the past five years enrollment has shown increases-part of what NCEA president Leonard De Fiore has described as a "true renaissance" for Catholic schools...
...This lack would have forced her to "seek out private lessons at some expense and inconvenience to the family...
...Parent and pastor, rank-and-file laymen and laywomen, as well as diocesan leaders, all share some responsibility for this decline...
...She had been a chemistry teacher for thirty-five years...
...For those of us who work in the schools, the tradition of excellence in teaching and character formation-which is the sisters' legacy--is both daunting and encouraging...
...One hundred twenty-four years later, in 1997, the last of these sisters left the school...
...We in Montgomery, as in many other Catholic communities across the nation, find ourselves at the crossroad: Who will continue the historic mission of the sisters...
...Chances are they owe it to a Sister Agnes or a Sister Mary Alice...
...It is daunting because people have come to expect much from Catholic schools...
...We need them to remind us about the beauty of God in "dappled things": our students-rich-poor, black-white-red-yellow-brown, smart and learning-disabled...
...In 1873, the Sisters of Loretto founded the Catholic high school in Montgomery, Alabama, where I am now principal...
...the space isn't there...
...Their insistence on hard work, their uncompromising faith in God, their belief that all students could succeed, and their personal financial sacrifices spoke eloquently of the church's broader mission to serve the poor within the United States...
...It caters to support groups of every stripe: the young, lic school teacher...
...In some inner cities, Catholic schools have been closed by fiat of the diocese, abandoning students to decrepit and dangerous public school systems...
...Here's why: In Cincinnati, where ! now reside with my husband and two preschool-age children, our parish CCD has swelled beyond the numbers matriculated in our parish school...
...They have the economic means to help Catholic schools the most...
...If that were all there was to it, many could argue "mission accomplished...
...A woman of considerable means recently told me that her child was not in a particular Catholic school because "it didn't have a decent fine arts program...
...But NCEA's own research shows that despite these openings, "there is still a great demand for space--many schools have waiting lists...
...The pressure is on...
...We live in a society that trivializes our faith by privatizing it and, worse, is openly hostile to religious claims...
...This attitude betrays a certain naivet6 about what constitutes adequate faith formation among the young...
...It's encouraging because we realize the potential transforming effects Catholic schools can have on both students and families...
...This scarcity, unheard of when I was growing up, is caused, in part, by shifting demographics...
...We need schools to train our children in the practices of the church--its songs, its liturgy, its prayers, its customs--and to prompt them to be open to grace...
...I don't want families to be forced to choose between the arts and religious education...
...But we cannot offer comprehensive fine arts programs if that means we become too expensive for middle-class Catholics...
...We can't become a private school with a Catholic label...
...But for many of them, social pressures to be in the "right" circles, or the expectation that Catholic schools should have all the accouterments of a wealthy suburban or private school (state-of-the-art athletic programs, finely manicured campuses, the newest technology) pull them away...
...Parents fret over whether space will be available when their child ten reach kindergarten age...
...There are trade-offs...
...High school tuitions in diocesan Catholic high schools are between $3,000 and $5,000 a year...
...The attitude of these parents is that CCD religious training is sufficient to form and inform their chiIdren's Catholicism, and to inoculate their children against the negativity and nihilism of the culture...
...I presume she is trying to get some rest at the Loretto motherhouse in Kentucky, though I doubt that this remarkable woman is handling retirement gracefully...
...For example, here in Cincinnati the largest parish in the archdiocese has no school...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 7
